Hey there, Mountaineer alum here. Moved away from the area, but keep tabs on UP ball as a coach in WI. I noticed IM had a really down year, and heard they had huge numbers problems as well. What happened in IM?

I had heard that many of the better IM players decided to go to Kingsford this year in school of choice for their own reasons,surprising if this is true, there was no discussion at the beginning of the year about this on this site from IM fans making me wonder if this was indeed fact.would be nice to know if this was indeed the reason an annual powerhouse team slipped into the realm of mediocrity.

"A fool and his money are soon parted,so just how long have you been broke"

That is not true. 4 years ago there was a wave of students from Iron Mountain that transferred to Kingsford. The reason wasn't sports. There was a big disagreement with the way the school system in Iron Mountain was run and a bunch of good teachers Iron Mountain cut ties with. Many of these teachers ended up at Kingsford. I heard there were over 50 kids at that time that transferred to Kingsford in various grades. Since then, Iron Mountain has been shrinking in grade school enrollment. Their high school enrollment is still solid at this time.

Iron Mountain had a lot of kids more interested in Soccer than Football this year. Hard for a Class C school to support both.

Think about a good program like Menominee. They have Football and that is it. No soccer there.

I would second UP's last statement there. Soccer has had a devastating effect I believe on Kingsford and Iron Mountain's football teams. Not all of those kids would go out for football, but there are some good athletes playing soccer that if soccer weren't an option would be able to start for the football team. Especially in a school Iron Mountain's size, losing even two athletes a year from the football team makes a big difference.

I haven't failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison